Coming Home One Short  A Cdoe: Ascension tag
by Lost Lantean
Summary: Losses are a part of war and though it may not be right, some losses are simply harder to deal with than others.


**A/N:** Once again this is set in CommandoWolf's Ascension AU and uses her character.

This is based on Chapter 8 of Code: Ascension and takes place shortly after that chapter ends.

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Captain Bill watched the line of planes as they were moved into a hanger for repairs, standard maintenance and extraction of the sensor data recording module. His own aircraft was just inside the facility, which might be better described as a large metal tent, and had technicians swarming over it. Some were removing the empty missile racks while others reloaded the machinegun magazine so that it would be ready for the next sortie. A quick look revealed that he was almost down to the red tracers, meaning only 10 seconds of ammunition remained.

Moving away from the nose, his eyes inspected the aircraft heading towards the tail. The hull was pockmarked with laser strikes, each location given away as points where the matte grey metal was scored. More serious hits were marked by deeper indentations and metal splatter formed by droplets of molten metal having hardened before falling completely off of the plane. Cringing at how deep some of those holes were, the sight made him glad he flew a fighter-bomber.

Heavier, slower, and less maneuverable than a superiority fighter, the plane made up for that in stability, armor and ability to carry more ordinance. Today, it looked like the tradeoff was a good one. Two points on the plane were shining like a mirror, the ablative armor had been almost completely vaporized, leaving the mylar mirror and underlying thermal insulation exposed. Another laser or two there and he would have joined Michelle on the ground.

The thought brought a wave of guilt and was threatening to force tears. The sound of a panel crashing to the floor and the loud curse of one worker didn't faze Bill as he left the hanger. An argument over which aircraft would be getting the precious few spare parts in inventory drifted past unhearing ears. Two pilots trying to impress a nurse just outside the side door didn't so much as raise an eyebrow. Eyes focused on the ground, Captain Bill simply walked to his tent, suddenly feeling very tired.

No one had heard from Michelle yet, and XANA had recently taken to using airman ELT beacons as lures for rescue teams. Colonel Sheppard wasn't happy, which was putting it mildly, but with no one having evidence of either Michelle or Melissa's successful ejection command wasn't taking any chances. Rescue missions would be launched, but as force based patrols which meant it would take time. Hopefully not more than Michelle, Melissa or the other pilots had. Making it to his tent, Bill sank down into a chair, grabbed his laptop and the flash drive he carried at almost all times. Booting the machine he connected the drive and pulled up one of the pictures stored on it. His family, including the little white dog came up. Spliced in was a photo of Michelle standing proudly and smiling in simple combat fatigues.

He silently wished he'd recorded one of their singing sessions as he looked at the picture and the memory brought both a smile to his lips and tears to his eyes. Humming the first song they'd sang together, he remembered with a slight chuckle how he'd been on the wrong verse. She had graciously agreed to start over again from the beginning in order to sing it together. A regret flashed through him, telling her that she wasn't good at the high notes. It didn't matter that she'd hesitantly responded with accurate and needed criticism of her own. What mattered was that he shouldn't have said anything and just enjoyed listening to her sing. Now he might never get the chance to do so again. Nor tell her just how good her voice sounded.

Sighing sadly and hitting play on 'Sounds of silence' again he Eyed his bed he decided against it, knowing that sleep wouldn't come and it was too early anyway. Knowing that he should be careful what he wished for, he almost hoped for a scramble alert anyway. It would be a nice clean way to get up in the air and have a look around her crash site. Any sort of proof of her life would be welcome. But a look into the mostly clear sky seemed to dash that hope. XANA usually preferred IFR conditions, his reliance on sensors and ability to screw with radar and guidance systems provided an advantage in low visibility conditions.

The thought of simply going to Colonel Sheppard and commandeering a group of aircraft and ground vehicles or a helicopter came to mind. But without official sanction and support that could turn into a disaster and Michelle would never forgive either man for the loss of life that would result from the rescue force being wiped out by the base's defenders in the mistaken belief that they had been compromised. With a sad, lonely sigh, Bill turned back to his laptop and looked at the blank screen for a second before tapping a key and bringing back the picture and all the bittersweet emotion behind it. Sucking in a breath, Bill watched the picture of Michelle lose the friendly smile. It was an illusion created by his worried mind but it was entirely too real anyway. She almost sneered at him, her silent demand to know what he was doing sitting around and the fact that there was no acceptable answer.

Closing the laptop quickly, he let it power down on its own and yanked the flashdrive out of its SEC-USB socket. The supposedly secure version of the USB interface really shared only the connector in common. The protocol was completely re-written and still called USB in the hopes of fooling XANA. Not that it mattered. What did was that he'd spent almost an hour lost somewhere and by now the data people should have verified that the sensor recordings were free of corruption attributable to XANA. What the pilots couldn't see, their planes may have. Feeling the energy of his excitement and purpose he sprinted to the base tech-center, pushed through the checkpoints as quickly as he could and logged into a free data terminal.

Two hours later Commander Anthrax, Colonel Sheppard and Corporal Winters were assembled as a breathless Captain struggled to spit out the words everyone wanted to hear: "I know she's alive."

Sheppard's face hardened with resolve and desire. Corporal Winters was relieved to know his sister had escaped the crash of her jet and Anthrax was simply maintaining the necessary military detachment. Ignoring all of that, Bill excitedly laid out the evidence for a successful bail-out: faint radar signatures from the ejection seats that matched a triangulated position of the ELT devices. The heat plumes of the ejection seat rocket motors picked up by an infrared camera on one of the light scout planes. Recorded destruction of ground based targets with no correlating aircraft attacks either deliberate, accidental or resulting from expended ordinance that missed the original target. There was even an estimate of the best locations to look for survivors based on the battlefield conditions observed during the battle and what was recorded as the planes returned to base.

Slamming both hands down on the table, Captain Bill looked up from his papers, which were now strewn haphazardly across the table, "Permission to go rescue her."

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**A/N 2: **This has to end here as I don't really know what will happen in chapter 9. Revision and/or extension is possible after CW posts that chapter.

A few definitions:

**Ablative armor**: Armor that is designed to boil away under intense heat. The phase change from solid to liquid and then to vapor absorbs huge amounts of heat energy which is then carried away from the vehicle by the escaping material. It is of much less use against non-thermal weapons but XANA uses lasers which damage things by superheating them.

**IFR:** Instrument Flight Rules. Basically anytime the pilot is expected to fly an aircraft using only the cockpit instruments without outside visual reference they are flying IFR.

**ELT: **Emergency Location Transponder. It's a radio that broadcasts continuously to signal the location of a crashed aircraft or downed pilot.

**Commando Wolf:** Without DocX I'm not sure how to get you the drafts. If you liked them that much, I can post them as a separate story. As for K.V.K. I hope I didn't do the wrong thing in bringing her up. I can understand how you feel about that, sort of anyway. Time supposedly heals all wounds, they just may not heal perfectly. I'm glad she saved you though.

As for me, I still do think about you, you could probably tell that though. I am doing better (you asked in one of your reviews and I never answered). Not sure if I'll ever be the same but I don't think I want to go back to what I was before meeting you so it's not a bad thing. Hope you're doing well over there.

As for my comment on your writing, Ascension is anything but textbook like. So were the kissmas stories, which I enjoyed by the way.

Finally, I liked the outtakes but getting mauled by XAA... not so much. Can you call her off now?


End file.
